Styleguides

This page explains the styles the Chimera project uses for the source code, commit messages, and Github issues.

Code style

Writing good commit messages

This guidelines on writing commit messages are based on http://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit, which offers examples and argues why good commit messages are important.

A commit messages should have a summary line (think of a title), which

• is short, only ~50 characters,
• is capitalized like a title,
• is written in imperative tone, present tense.

The summary line should be followed by a blank line and a longer description of the changes, which should address the following three questions:

• why is the change necessary?
• how does the commit solve the problem?
• what effects does the change have?
• the text should be wrapped at around 72 characters to be easily displayed on standard consoles
• the issue number of the fixed bug or implemented feature should be referenced at the end, e.g. "Fixes #42" or "Resolves #123".

Writing good Github issues